100 years ago in Spokane: A former German aristocrat, now surviving in a Spokane chicken shack, explained how her noble family fell from grace

The Spokane Daily Chronicle tracked down the Countess Lutzu of Germany at her current home: her tumbledown chicken shack near Garden Springs.

“There was a time when she rode behind her fine span of horses down the streets of her native city in Germany, and saw those who met her bow their heads to her in recognition of her nobility,” the Chronicle wrote.

“Ah, the grandeur, the splendor of it,”the Countess said with misty eyes.

She explained how the downfall of the House of Lutzu came about.

Long ago, her father, Freiherr Lutzu, was ostracized from the family because he dared to marry outside of the nobility. He married her mother, who was the daughter of an architect “and very beautiful.”

During her childhood, she was “given the homage due my title.” But as time went on, the family breach was not healed. Her father decided to abandon the ancestral lands and come to America.

“Our titles were cast aside,” she said. “We were happy here until misfortune seemed to follow us. The family, the name, is all but gone now. I am the last. … For myself, I do not care.”

She same to Spokane 17 years earlier to be the private tutor in a prominent family. She also gave private lessons in German, but when the war came, people no longer wanted to learn German. She had earned her living ever since by raising chickens.

She lived alone in her shack, with gunnysacks hung at the door to keep out the cold.